Pop quiz: It's 4:30 on a Winter afternoon. You're half way up the cone on Mt.Washington, in the middle of a full blown blizard and your partner has no crampons. What do you do?
A: You turn around and go down :-)
Yeah it sucks but I don't think there was ever a doubt in my mind that it was the right thing to do. Maybe not the ballsiest thing to do but definatelly the right decision.
As it was, we had taken a late start to the day. A foot of fresh powder had fallen overnight and the sky was still covered in clouds at the time we left the Lodge. The plan was to just get a good, not so exposed winter hike before heading down to Boston. Personally my spirits weren't that high but you can't just waste a day of fresh snow. The destination was the Nineteen Mile trail up to Wildcat and down, accross the valley from Mt. Washington.
As we're driving up we notice a few breaks in the clouds to the point where we can actually see the blue sky peeking from behind and some sunlight beaming off of the Presidentials.
"Look at that! What do you say we do Washington instead?"
Next thing I know, we're walking up the trail towards Tuckerman Ravine. For that first hour, it was a beautiful winter day. Temps up in the 30s, partial sunshine. Plenty of fresh snow. It was looking like one of those days you don't get to see that often if most of your winter activities tend to happen around the White Mountains. But like they say here in New England, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute.
At the base of Lion's Head I strap on my crampons and give up my ice axe to my partner Travis so he could at least use his upper body up the steep climb of Lion's Head. He moves ahead as I take the time to strap on the crampons but it doesn't take long to catch up to him. Amazingly he's moving up pretty good, but using up way too much energy doing it. Half way up we run into a bus load of people coming back. Supposedly the weather up on the ridge is brutal. The guides are turning their clients back down. We move on.
Then the wind starts. The gusts increasingly stronger. The visibility becomes poorer and it's getting cold. One more layer on and we're off. Half an hour later we're looking down on Tukerman Ravine. Occasionally we can actually see the head wall, most likely when a strong gust of wind blows the clouds off. Now the weather is indeed brutal. Possibly gusts of 60mph and snowing, horizontally. The path is completely frozen over. Travis can hardly stay up on his feet. He's slipping and sliding his way around and we're not even on a slope, just the wind.
We make it through this giant Ice Rink and up to where the sign to the Alpine Garden trail is, at the base of Mt. Washington's cone. Now it starts sloping up fairly steep. It should be a quick 30 to 45 minutes from here to the summit but the trail was nowhere to be seen. At times we're wading in waist deep snow over frozen ice. Add that to the wind and you've got the perfect recipe for an avalanche.
I break trail up the cone, and Travis follows me. Every couple of minutes I wait for him. He's having a really hard time now staying on his feet but I gotta take my hat out to him. What an effort. Well, it's kinda cold so I leave my hat on. We keep climbing. Slowly but surely :-) We reach and avalanche chute coming down from the parking lot on the summit which now is really close. We decide not to cross the chute but head straight up the steeper and rockier slope. The weather's beating down on us pretty good but what else is new. After all, this is Mt.Washington, home of the nastiest weather in North America and today it's just another day on Washington.
It's about 4:30 and I can almost make out the building on top when the stronger gusts actually blow some clouds out of the way just slightly. We're not any more than just 100 vertical feet from the summit but it's late and my partner isn't going anywhere. We decide to call it a day. We called it a "summit-but-not-really". If only we had brought an extra pair of crampons. Oh well, maybe next time.